Europe’s Union: Dictate Or Democracy

It is difficult to overlook the emergence of an artificial “plastic” entity that its makers call “Europe”. The official press, media, culture, and parts of the political establishment cheer this development. This is true for Europe and the rest of our culture because the mutuality of elites is stronger than their national origins. More than that, the forces just named provide the propulsion that moves the project as it proceeds from fiction to reality. This makes it risky to formulate and to spread critical warnings about the unfolding process. Doing so might be, if only reasons are needed to advise caution, rather easy. However, doing so is also “dangerous” as any objection to the forging a centralized Europe will be used by the opinion makers to prove that you are a “bad person”. Accordingly, you resent and hinder the realization of the common good they propagate. If any proof is lacking for that one, then the recently issued Nobel Prize to the EU’s “apparat” can be invoked as evidence.

The matter of uniting Europe, at least under the terms dictated, has significant consequences for our shared western culture and tradition. That seems to fit, regardless of whether you read this in Europe or in one of its overseas mutations. Dealing with the matter by ignoring it is, as always, an option. “Neutrality” only holds if the contemporary lives in an illusionary cocoon of unawareness. Nevertheless, not knowing, or refusing to notice, does not protect anyone from consequences that will ultimately reach those that enjoy the illusion of being outsiders. Meanwhile, the approach of the calamity reminds one of a freight train that is about to ram into those that set up their camp in its path.

Although the writer’s disapproval is discernible from his warning’s intensity, the qualifications between the lines are not to be ignored. The primary problem does not follow from the attempt to give the European continent a structure –wherever its boundaries might be. Historically, Europe lacked that and it is this deficiency that, for centuries, has been the cause of the vicissitudes of world history.

The caveats voiced here are provoked by the centralistic goals smuggled into the European blueprint for the future by those that pander it. The plan, if realized, will put the power created by it into the hands of an elite that defines itself by the shared ideology of its insiders. This pursued centralization follows from a conviction. It is that the intended “good” can only be implemented if, regardless of their apparent consultation, the fickle masses are excluded from the formulation of goals, their implementation, and the judgment of the upshot.

If the foregoing is true then the reader, regardless of his physical location, may be alerted. Eurocracy’s efforts that are inspired by concepts that go beyond the geographical boundaries of the Eurasian continent. As such, these present a universal threat. More state, more debt, more purchased votes paid for with more gifts from the recipient’s picked pocket, more central power, and less democracy, are all parts of a nurtured trend. Often, the silently implemented change is tacitly tolerated, even rewarded, by the somnambulant voter. From Los Angeles to London, from Madrid to Moscow, the mechanism of modern servitude to be set up with the initial consent of the subjugated is unfolding.

The cause of “Big Government” is as attractive to elites as is honey’s scent to bears. Big and remote government is an instrument that makes possible the practice of what the citizen, if directly consulted, would reject. The more isolated from popular scrutiny this instrument is, the greater the freedom of its directors. The same pertains to projects that, from close up, would be scrutinized and dismissed because of the exposed citizen’s practical knowledge. With the help of large and therefore distant political structures that act from above, the common sense that comes from below from the directly affected, is weakened. Furthermore, the larger the entity, the weaker the natural links that connect its constituent parts. Correspondingly, those that control the communications within such constructions attain power by being enabled to create the semblance of a “general will”. This proclaimed general will has roots that are inaccessible to the citizen. Those that represent the fictional “whole” and lend substance to the fabrication woven into it, have influence. The remote institutions that implement the product empower their officials as their remoteness hinders the flow of power and control from below.

Since there is no European nation, a democratic European federation is a project that cannot be realized consensually. Nor is it maintainable unless popular sovereignty is reduced to a folkloristic formality. In the pursuit of this goal, the project’s architects push for something that will not come about naturally. Therefore, devoid of a natural force behind the plans of unity, the pressure from elite-manned superimposed institutions is required. Even if the end is judged to be noble, regardless of the claimed benign nature of the exerted guiding pressure, the means applied are undemocratic. A system created from above is one that suffers from a birth defect regardless of the commendable intent of those that impose it.

The alternative corresponds to the more modest and original plan for a European order. It would provide greater coordinated unity through a confederation. This would make common action and conflict resolution, as desired by those that have launched the idea a century ago, possible. However, such a creation could not serve as an instrument for the elites of “Eurocracy” to pursue their agenda. The need to seek the consent of the governed would nix favored projects and would slow down the implementation of whatever is agreed upon consensually.

The currently desired future state of the ideologically driven and power craving –and by the way, unelectable- elites is one of the two alternatives for Europe. It is achievable only if new realities are created and the construct’s subjects are re-educated. To do that, force-backed “persuasion” against prevailing conditions must be applied. The alternative approach is less dramatic, slower, and more modest – the sane might say, “more realistic”- in its purpose. The resulting confederation, that acknowledges a pluralistic entity, could guarantee identity-conform local development and cooperation. That, regardless of historically grown difference and facilitated merely by central organs with limited competence. As an added benefit, such instruments avoid the expensive and insensitive bureaucratic regulation that comes from artificial standardization.

Who we are

The Brussels Journal is written by Europeans, living in as well as outside Europe. The Brussels Journal is published by the Society for the Advancement of Freedom in Europe (SAFE), a Swiss non-profit organisation.